


flesh and blood, data and bytes

by Storm_Clouds_and_Starshine



Category: DIgimon Story Cyber Sleuth - Fandom, Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Story Series | Digimon World Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Gen, Kinda?, Memory Loss, Post-Canon, THESE KIDS ADOPTED EACH OTHER, Team as Family, anyways hi aiko's fic hurt my heart, does it count as character death if technically he already was dead?, listen, so i made this, uh, yeet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24101617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storm_Clouds_and_Starshine/pseuds/Storm_Clouds_and_Starshine
Summary: Aiba Takumi did not survive the final Connect Jump. His mental data dispersed, and was collected, and the remains usesd as a basis for an attempted reparation.Things were fine.But data and bytes do not survive well in a world of flesh and blood, even if they are contained and kept hidden.
Relationships: Aiba Takumi & Kamishiro Yuugo, Aiba Takumi & Kamishiro Yuuko, Aiba Takumi & Sanada Arata, Aiba Takumi & Shiramine Nokia, Kamishiro Yuuko & Kamishiro Yuuko, Sanada Arata & Kamishiro Yuuko, Shiramine Nokia & Kamishiro Yuugo, Shiramine Nokia & Kamishiro Yuuko, Shiramine Nokia & Sanada Arata, anyways just a big bunch of adopted siblings here, do i have them all? i hope i have them all
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	flesh and blood, data and bytes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aikotters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aikotters/gifts), [OnixflametheBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnixflametheBlue/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Abstracts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4573290) by [aikotters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aikotters/pseuds/aikotters). 



> blame aikoisari for this. that is all  
> also i can't believe that this is actually the first time i've ever written takumi. wack

They were all supposed to get out of it alive. All of them, all five of them, all of them  _ alive _ and  _ awake _ and  _ in their own bodies _ .

  
  


Five children went into the final battle against the creatures that had stolen from them for years. Four came out of it.

  
  


Well. Perhaps that was a lie. They had all come out of it, technically, but - did he count? He wasn’t sure if he counted or not. Kyo-  _ Alphamon _ , had said that the data she had found had been so barren and resembled nothing like life. Alphamon had said that she had needed extra data to fill in the large gaps between what was there and what wasn’t, and that most of who he was, his mental data, was made of what his teammates and partners and friends knew of him.

  
  


So he probably didn’t count.

  
  


Five children had walked in. Kamishiro Yuuko, Kamishiro Yuugo, Sanada Arata, Shiramine Nokia, and Aiba Takumi. They had all walked out. Except Takumi. Except the  _ real _ Takumi, because so much of him was made of who others saw the  _ real _ Takumi as, so did he even  _ count _ ? Was it right for him to claim to be the same person?

  
  


It didn’t matter. He - whoever he was - had woken up in Takumi’s body. The real Takumi’s friends had though that he was Takumi. So he would be. He would play along because he  _ wanted _ to be Takumi,  _ wanted _ to be the person that they thought he was.

  
  


If only he could have gotten a donation of some of their mental data. It might have made him a better actor.

  
  


Regardless.

  
  


They didn’t comment on anything strange. He pretended to notice nothing. It would all be fine, everything would be fine.

  
  


He ignored the way his hands shook.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Yuuko was the one to drag him to various restaurants in-between school and detective work. Kyoko - the  _ real _ Kyoko, who seemed just as quirky and odd as the Kyoko that Alphamon had posed as that Takumi remembered - seemed to think that having friends to distract him from working was good. He wasn’t sure why. Most of his memories were that - detective work, taking cases here and there, fixing various issues with technology or finding lost objects or other such things. Sure, he couldn’t Connect Jump into anything, not with this body of flesh and blood instead of data and bytes, but finding things would always be finding things, even if finding some things was a more complex task than simply searching through the levels of Kowloon.

  
  


Regardless.

  
  


Yuuko grabbed his arm and didn’t wait for an answer as she forcibly drug him out of Nakano Broadway. It would have been rude, except Yuuko was supposed to be his friend, so she was probably just doing friend things. 

  
  


“We are going to go to the new restaurant that opened yesterday and you  _ will _ eat.” She said to him, hand firmly grasping his forearm while with the other she drug Arata in much the same fashion. She didn’t have to drag Nokia, though that might have also been because Nokia was helping Yuugo stand and move around in the first place.

  
  


“Okay.” Takumi said. 

  
  


“Just ‘okay’?” Arata grumbled, looking at Takumi with half a glare.

  
  


Takumi shrugged. “I’m not one to turn down food, as long as i don’t go broke paying for it.”

  
  


“That won’t be a problem.” Yuuko interjected. “I’m paying for the food.”

  
  


Arata stopped grumbling and stood op straighter. “Then why didn’t you say so?!”

  
  


This led to the other four chasing after him. Which was a bit strenuous, but it was fun. It was nice.

  
  


Takumi ignored how his hands shook as he held the chopsticks.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Arata was still a fan of manga. 

  
  


That didn’t surprise him, but it was a reassuring fact all the same.

  
  


Arata also happened to be  _ ecstatic _ that Bouken Delete was still being printed and sold - which, Takumi would guess the reason being that since EDEN had yet to be completed still, since there was no Suedou to speed up progress on EDEN, there were no hackers in EDEN, and so there was no reason to discontinue Bouken Delete.

  
  


Arata also happened to enjoy dragging Takumi away from his work. Which was silly, because really, Takumi knew how to take care of himself.

  
  


Still. It was nice, knowing that they cared about him. Even if he wasn’t really the person they thought he was.

  
  


“You should read it.” Arata said while paying for the seventh or so volume of the manga at one of the shops in the third floor of Broadway. “It’s really interesting, even aside from the hacker parts. There’s a reason why I was so upset when-” his eyes scanned the crowd, scanned all the people who might have questions or want to know what he was talking about when he referenced an event that had happened in a reality that no longer had ever been “- I thought that it was discontinued.” Arata finished.

  
  


Takumi shrugged. “I guess. I’m not really the manga type though?”

  
  


Arata gave Takumi a strange look. “‘Not the manga type’, huh?”

  
  


Oh. Oh no. Was the real Takumi a manga fan? Had he messed up? Had he done something wrong? He was so far deep into pretending but he didn’t want to stop now, he wanted to keep the friends he had. “Uh.”

  
  


Arata hmphed and grabbed another two volumes of a manga that Takumi didn’t recognize. “I’ll make  _ sure _ you become one. If there’s any manga that’ll get you hooked onto it, it’s Digimon V-Tamer 01.”

  
  


“Digimon, huh?” Takumi asked. 

  
  


Arata grinned at him. It seemed the significance of the word wasn’t lost on the boy. “Yeah, I know. Turns out that the digital monster game inspired the manga, which inspired the more recent versions of the game. Who knew, right?”

  
  


Takumi shrugged and gave a small smile. He didn’t see it as worth too much notice, but it was a funny little coincidence. And maybe Arata would have picked some good manga after all.

  
  


He ignored the way his hands shook as he held the shopping bags, or the way his legs felt like they were taking a little bit too long to move.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Nokia was very, very energetic.

  
  


Takumi was really  _ not _ . Or, well, not in the same way.

  
  


Nokia was shorter bursts of energy, while Takumi was more stamina that lasted for several hours.

  
  


Though these differences didn’t stop the two from somehow ending up chasing each other across and through various parts of Shinjuku, because it had started out as a “poke the other without them seeing you do it” that had devolved into a game of tag, but what else could you do, really, but go along?

  
  


He was doing fine. He  _ was _ doing fine. He was.

  
  


Except. 

  
  


Except his legs didn’t move the way he wanted to and he tripped on a root that he should have avoided. Except that his arms took too long to respond to what he wanted them to do and they couldn’t break his fall. Except that he went tumbling onto the ground, and that  _ hurt _ .

  
  


Nokia paused, her head swiveling to look and see if he was okay, before she changed direction completely and ran over to him. “Takumi! Are you okay?”

  
  


He didn’t need to see her eyes to know she was worried. “I-” he coughed. Nothing came out of his mouth, though he felt like there almost should have been something. “I’m fine.”

  
  


“Are you sure?” Nokia’s eyebrows were furrowed and her tone of voice didn’t do anything to mask the concern that she was radiating. “You took a pretty hard fall.”

  
  


Takumi gave her a shaky smile. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just tired.”

  
  


Nokia huffed. “Then sleep!” She grabbed his forearms, like Yuuko had done those weeks ago, and helped him stand. “Kyoko-san works you too hard.” She grumbled.

  
  


Takumi winced. “Uh. . . about that.”

  
  


“If you tell me that you’ve ignored her telling you to take a break, I’m going to hit you.” Nokia warned him with dead seriousness.    
  


Takumi didn’t say anything.

  
  


“ _ Ta _ kumi!” 

  
  


Oh, well. Some things didn’t change, after all.

  
  


He ignored that his hands shook, that his legs trembled, and that for a few seconds he couldn’t breathe.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Yuugo was one of the most difficult things to get used to.

  
  


One of the most difficult thing to learn how to pretend around, as well.

  
  


It wasn’t any fault of the boy. Not really. He’d just been integrated into the Eaters for so long that he’d picked up their good memory and held onto it, analyzed more than he needed to, and happened to be a bit protective of his friends.

  
  


But it made hiding the truth harder. 

  
  


Maybe Takumi shouldn’t have hidden the truth, but - they had all been so  _ glad _ when he’d woken up. They’d been happy and he. . . he didn’t want to take that from them. They’d had so much taken from them -  _ he _ had been taken from them, in a way, and. . . he didn’t want them to hurt more. So he’d lied.

  
  


But enough about Takumi.

  
  


Yuugo was more quiet and drawn-in, like Yuuko had been at the beginning of his job with Alphamon, before he knew she was Alphamon. Yuugo didn’t talk very much, but he had a sort of wisdom that made you sad when you sat down and thought about what he’d have had to go through to get that wisdom in the first place.

  
  


Yuugo also had a sense of humor as dry as Arata’s, and a knack for teasing the older boy. Which made sense. Yuugo only really came out of his shell around Arata though. He seemed a bit like he wasn’t sure how to interact with the others. Takumi . . . could relate.

  
  


Still, Yuugo was perceptive. 

  
  


It didn’t surprise Takumi that he would be the one to figure out the truth.

  
  


“You’re not entirely the same person as the one who rescued me from the Mother Eater, are you?”

  
  


It was in the middle of the afternoon. Takumi was on his belly, facing the wall, and Yuugo was sitting on the floor next to him. They were in the general living room area of the Kamishiro’s penthouse apartment, because Yuugo had insisted that Takumi and Arata and Nokia visit, and the Kamishiro family was rich, and Arata and Nokia and Yuuko were all in a different room doing who-knows-what.

  
  


Takumi looked over at Yuugo, who was looking at him. “Yeah.” He said quietly. “I’m not. How’d you figure out?”

  
  


Yuugo sighed. “The you that’s in front of me is more quiet, and . . . selfless. You act like everything you do is for everyone else, and nothing is for you. The you from before fighting the Mother Eater did things for his own enjoyment, small as they were.”

  
  


Takumi made a small bitter noise that would have been a laugh in any other circumstance. “It makes sense that my doing things for other people is the difference.” He sighed, and let his face drop against the carpet floor. 

  
  


“I’m tired.” He says to Yuugo. “And sometimes everything hurts. But mostly I’m  _ tired _ .”

  
  


“I. . .” Yuugo began, before clearing his throat. In a softer tone of voice, he continued. “I’m sorry.”

  
  


Takumi shrugged, not lifting his face. “It’s okay.” He said into the carpet. “I’ve always been tired, with the few memories I have that are genuine.”

  
  


That didn’t seem to help. Still, laying on the carpet let him ignore how his hands shook, and his legs ached, and his chest didn’t want to rise or fall to let him breathe. He could pretend for a little while longer.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“You’re dying.” Kyoko tells him, five months after he’d woken up.

  
  


“Oh, really? That’s unfortunate.” He’d said, before the words registered in his brain.

  
  


He looked up. Nokia, and Arata, and Yuuko, and Yuugo, and Kyoko all looked at him with varying expressions. None of them spoke.

  
  


“I mean.” He began.

  
  


“ _ That’s unfortunate _ . What the  _ fuck _ does that mean, Takumi?!”

  
  


Ah, Arata. Of course he was the first to speak.

  
  


Takumi shrugged. “It’ll be okay. It’s not like I haven’t died before.” 

  
  


The horror on their faces grew. Takumi shrunk down some. “I’ll. . . shut up now.”

  
  


They wanted to say more. But they didn’t. For some reason they didn’t, and he was so, so glad. He wasn’t ready to have that conversation. He didn’t think he’d  _ ever _ be ready to have that conversation. He didn’t want to have that conversation.

  
  


He pretended to ignore the way his hands shook, and his legs ached, and his entire body trembled and hurt, and how he couldn't breathe. It would be fine. It would be.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It wasn’t fine.

  
  


Everything hurt, and everything  _ hurt _ . He was so  _ tired _ and it was hard to breathe and he just wanted to  _ rest _ .

  
  


Takumi had collapsed three days ago when standing up from the couch in the office at the agency. Thank the gods that the client had already left. Takumi knew that Kyoko wouldn’t have blamed him for any loss in reputation because of it, but he still would have felt bad.

  
  


Maybe it was some sort of detachment that kept him from feeling any impact over the fact that he was dying. He’d been in the hospital three days, after all. And it wasn’t like he couldn’t hear the doctors and nurses speaking to his mother.

  
  


It was nice to see his mother. She was so  _ concerned _ \- he didn’t think that she had ever been that concerned in the old timeline. It was. . . nice. Aiba Yukino was a good woman. Takumi felt bad for putting her through the experience of knowing that her son (even if he wasn’t really) was dying.

  
  


It was odd to not feel very strongly about his dying.

  
  


Maybe it was due to his having never been a real person in the first place. All he was was the memories of others, the impressions of a boy who was lonely but gave so much of himself to everyone else. Yeah, that was probably it. 

  
  


They visited him often. The other children. Yuuko and Yuugo and Nokia and Arata, all visiting. It. . . was nice. Takumi thought that Yuugo must have told them the truth, because the other three had looked at him even sadder that next day.

  
  


It took two more days for Takumi to begin to lose any feeling at all.

  
  


The doctors said that he didn’t have very long before his brain shut down, before his body would be reduced to a vegetative state. Yukino’s sadness and pain was endless. The other children probably blamed themselves.

  
  


He didn’t want to die.

  
  


They all sat around him, because they were his family. They’d fought together, forgotten but remembered, fought together once more. Even if he wasn’t the real Takumi, he was still  _ Takumi _ . And. . . he was glad that if he died, it would be surrounded by family.

  
  


He shivered. 

  
  


“Cold?” Yuuko asked.

  
  


He shrugged. “I’ll be okay.”

  
  


Yuuko looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t.

  
  


It was silent for a stretch, just the five of them all breathing. 

  
  


“I’m sorry.” Takumi says into the silence. “I should have told the truth sooner, but I. . . I didn’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”

  
  


He looked at all of their faces, at Arata and at Nokia and at Yuuko and at Yuugo. “I don’t think I get a choice though.”

  
  


“Why not?!” Nokia said. “It isn’t  _ fair _ , we went through all of that and then-!”

  
  


“I know.” Takumi said, and the reality was starting to settle in, bit by bit. “I know. But I - I don’t think I was made to last. My mental data was so ruined and corrupted that the me that I am now is just what everyone else thought he was. And. . . well, we know that digital things aren’t really supposed to exist physically in the real world anyways.”

  
  


He tried to smile at them to reassure them, somehow. It was strained, and tired. He dropped it quickly enough.

  
  


“It still sucks that after we get everyone back, we lose someone again.” Arata muttered. 

  
  


The others murmured what sounded like agreement. Takumi couldn’t blame them.

  
  


“I’m sorry.” He said again. “Just. . . don’t leave me? Please?” It was a desperate wish. But. . . the wish of a dying person. A dying friend.

  
  


They all looked at each other. Then nodded.

  
  


“Yeah.” Nokia said. “We’ll stay with you. Until . . . you know.”

  
  


Takumi let his eyes slide closed and smiled. “Thanks, Nokia.”

  
  


It was nice to know that they cared.

  
  


And with them all gathered around, he didn’t notice that his hands didn’t move, or that his legs and chest didn’t ache, or that he couldn’t feel or hear a thing at all. All he knew, in those final moments that his mental data could hold itself together, was that he was there, with his brothers and sisters around him, and that there was nowhere else that he would rather be.

  
  


Aiba Takumi closed his eyes, and they never opened again.

**Author's Note:**

> i do actually feel bad for takumi. poor takumi. at least his final moments weren't painful?


End file.
